If you're curious about Assassin's Creed: Origins but haven't played it yet because it's just too damn expensive, today would be a good day to check out the Humble Monthly Bundle, where you can pick it up—along with a bunch of super-secret mystery games—for just $12. 

The Humble Monthly is a subscription-based package that delivers one big game (or sometimes more), which is kind of like an upcard in a lazy poker metaphor, and then a bunch of other games that you don't get to know about until the end of the month, when the next month's bundle becomes available. 

Last month, for instance, started with Northgard, Absolver, and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (hence the "sometimes more" descriptor above) and then tacked on Tannenberg, Minit, She Remembered Caterpillars, Steel Rats, Dandara, and A Short Hike. That's a serious steal for $12. 

This month's bundle is a great deal on the lead game alone: Assassin's Creed: Origins still goes for the full $60/£50/€60 on Steam, and has never dipped below $18. And you can cancel Humble Monthly subscriptions at any time (unless you sign up for one of the slightly-discounted term plans) and keep all the games you've received up to that point, meaning that you can snag Origins for 12 bucks and be done with it if that's all you're after. 

The current Humble Monthly Bundle will be available for purchase until May 3, which is also when the bonus games will be revealed.

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

We see the Blue Yeti USB microphone go on sale from time to time, and just a few days ago, it was marked down to $109.99 with Assassin's Creed Odyssey bundled with it. If you missed out on that deal, don't fret—what we consider to be the best microphone for most people is on sale again, this time for $79.99, with Assassin's Creed Origins.

It's on sale at GameStop with a unique red and gray color combination that appears only to be available at that particular retailer. Otherwise, the only red versions we've seen are red and black.

Color aside, this is a popular mic that is great for gaming and streaming, for the money.

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

We know why blockbuster series ultimately exist: if the games remain good enough to their audience, they'll generally keep selling big numbers. And hey, we love a whole bunch of them, but sometimes a cooling off period can't hurt. Take Assassin's Creed, which was flagging after the release of Unity and took a break after Syndicate, but came back last year with the far better Origins. 

This week, then, we ask the PC Gamer writers this: which game series should take a break? Guest contributor Fraser Brown also kindly takes part. As ever, we want to read your answers in the comments too. 

Joe Donnelly: Sonic the Hedgehog

I should probably say FIFA, Pro Evo or Football Manager here, given the fact each annual iteration could probably be reduced to a paid-for patch. But I actually enjoy the ritual of buying each new game—and drawing a line under the previous one—each year. Call me daft in the comments. 

Sonic, on the other hand, could do with a rest. If Sonic Mania taught us nothing else, it's that Sonic can still be relevant and, crucially, enjoyable in today's market when it sticks to what it knows. I'm a sucker for nostalgia, admittedly, but who really wants more Forces, Runners and Boom and the likes? Not me. Put your feet up for a wee while, Sonic. Chill out. Let's keep things simple moving forward.

Wes Fenlon: Total War

I write this while being fully excited for the next Total War game, Three Kingdoms, but: I wouldn't mind waiting a few years between big, majorly improved Total War installments. With the launch of the Warhammer series, the Total War dev team has obviously grown to support the simultaneous creation of new historical Total War games and the fantasy spin-off. Now that the two exist side-by-side, we can expect one or more new Total War releases every year, and these aren't games you just blast through in a sitting. They're deep and replayable for months on end, and the longer they have to gestate with the community, the better the mods for them end up being. I'm hopeful that Three Kingdoms brings with it some major changes to a formula that's been starting to get stale. I'd be totally fine with a new Total War game coming out every three years and being a major event. 

Fraser Brown: Assassin's Creed, maybe

I’m in two minds about Assassin's Creed. Origins ended up being one of my favourite games last year, but everything that connected it to the rest of the series was crap. The Order of the Ancients, First Civilisation and Abstergo stuff just didn’t matter. It was a game about a loveable Ptolemaic sheriff solving everyone’s problems. Odyssey looks like another step in a new direction, pushing the RPG stuff even more and throwing mythological monsters into the mix. I’m actually excited about the series again, but it’s entirely in spite of them being Assassin’s Creed games. 

So while Assassin’s Creed definitely needs a long break, I’m equally keen to see more open-world RPGs that blend history and mythology, but free from all the bloat and convoluted narrative that has developed over the last decade. 

Chris Livingston: Far Cry

Since 2012 a new Far Cry has come along almost every year (if you include Blood Dragon and Primal). I think they're generally good, fun, entertaining games, though they have sort of settled into a comfortable formula. Maybe it's time for a major re-think, rather than just a new map, new setting, and some tinkering with features. Far Cry 2 was vastly different than the original, and 3 was different than 2, so it would be great to see the next one, whenever it arrives, really step away from the mold, even if it takes an extra year or two. 

Jarred Walton: Final Fantasy

Okay, I admit I've never really been into the Final Fantasy games, but when 15 launched on PC I gave it a shot. And bounced off it so hard, I can't even imagine how people enjoy the series right now. The prologue was this lengthy teen-angst-meets-soap-opera and made me care about none of the characters. I hear it gets better, but it's going to take a lot to get me to consider wading back in. Maybe it's time to live up to the "final" part of the name and give it a rest.

Also, every yearly sports game. Madden 2018, NHL 2018, FIFA 2018, and so on. Working on those yearly installments must require some serious passion for the specific sport which I lack.

Samuel Roberts: Halo

Halo has already been on a break of sorts, if you don't count Halo Wars 2. Three years have passed since Halo 5 was released on a console I will probably never own (unless my 360 breaks, and I no longer have access to older Halos and Red Dead), and Halo Infinite made a splashy but detail-free appearance at E3. I think 343 has a lot of reverence for the lore of Halo, and clearly some of its multiplayer innovations (like Warzone) have gone down really well. But it's missing something for me: a big, sandbox-y campaign, and it has been since Halo 3. 

I'm predicting Halo Infinite will be in the 'living' looter shooter vein of Destiny and The Division, based simply on the name and the current shooter trends. I'm hoping that when Halo finally returns to PC, they put more of those classic larger-scale exciting encounters in the game, along the lines of Assault on the Control Room from Combat Evolved, or the double Scarab fight in Halo 3. This is what the series was always best at. 

As much as I was dazzled by Assassin's Creed Origins' incredible setting, I'm not sure the game made a compelling case for the series having a level-based progression system. Wandering into certain areas and being mauled by overpowered crocodiles actually made me feel less inclined to explore this incredible open world, which is the opposite of how I like to play this kind of game. 

I get why they did it. The levelling system provides essential structure and rewards that mean everything you do in Origins contributes to your progress in some way. My biggest problem is how it manifests in combat. Encounters with higher-level enemies in Origins are just frustrating. I would argue that the player doesn't have enough tools to perform effective crowd control, and one-on-one encounters produce plenty of cheap-feeling deaths. Unless enemies are within two or so levels of Bayek, it feels less like a test of skill and more like a death sentence where you're pelted with arrows and unblockable attacks. Plus, a stealth kill isn't always a stealth kill if Bayek isn't of a high enough level.

High-level regions are still a thing in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I asked creative director Jonathan Dumont about it last month when I visited Ubisoft Quebec. "Regions have a level, when you come in—they have a level range. [Let's say] I'm level 10, and that region is 15-20. That one's going to be tough. A great player could probably burn through it, but if it's 10 or 15 levels above, you shouldn't try to complete the quests in that region. Although, the thing that we've changed, once you go past that threshold, the zone will scale up as well." He also adds: "We have some characters or targets and events, and you'll hit that gate a little bit."

You shouldn't try and complete quests until your level is high enough that you actually stand a chance, then, which sounds pretty similar to Origins. I don't think it'll spoil the game, and I really enjoyed the last entry, but being discouraged from exploring certain regions until you hit an arbitrary number doesn't strike me as the best fit for a single-player open world game. I wish it was a little more flexible. 

In Origins, level requirements left a lot of room for filler. They provided so much structure that I didn't always feel in control of Bayek's journey through the game. I definitely found myself completing quests that I otherwise would've skipped entirely given the choice, just so I could reach the recommended level for the excellent main story assassinations. 

It's hard to tell how profoundly levels shape the game based on my four-or-so hours with Odyssey. When the protagonist Kassandra was level 22 and I went to fight a level 23 bear, the game warned me it was one level above me. The bear was tricky to kill, but then it was a bear. I also killed the demo's main target, a leader called Podarkes the Cruel, when Kassandra was level 20 and he was level 23. That one was pretty easy. My target showed up on the HUD with a red symbol, indicating that he was a threat, but I used some of the game's new abilities, like setting Kassandra's sword on fire, to take him down. 

Levels were prominent in the E3 demo, then, but it's too early to judge if completing side content will be as important as it was in Origins. In principle, though, I don't feel like 2017's Assassin's Creed really nailed level gating and progression. Odyssey brings interactive storytelling into the game for the first time, extending the notion of player choice, which has a lot of potential. But I'd also like the option to go anywhere and do anything without as much of a guided hand, especially when the world promises to be just as spectacular. 

In this week's PCG Q&A, we're exploring which series you've just had enough of playing. In some cases, burning out on a series can be a result of the fact that successful properties will seemingly run forever, past the point where we can still enjoy them, combined with our changing tastes and habits as years go by. Below, you'll find the answers of the PC Gamer team, and below that, we'd love to read your answers in the comments. 

To reiterate, then: which game series burned you out?

Samuel Roberts: Call of Duty

My little brother plays a ton of Call of Duty, and he's not bothered one bit by the lack of a campaign in Black Ops 4, which confirms we're from completely different generations of player. Battle royale and zombie modes are enough to make him drop money on the game, but for me the campaign was always my first stop in CoD. During the Infinity Ward days they were particularly strong, to the point where I replayed CoD 2's campaign multiple times.

They were my gateway to the multiplayer. After Modern Warfare 3, though, the series just tired me out on all levels, and the campaign for Black Ops 2 wasn't terribly exciting based on my time with the first few missions. I'd probably just been playing them for too long, and felt like I'd seen all of the tricks a CoD campaign could possibly show me. 

Jody Macgregor: The Walking Dead

The first season of Telltale's Walking Dead is one of my favorite games, and I loved the second season too. Its finale didn't quite have the same impact as the climax of the original, but what could equal that? Together they add up to one of the most atmospheric takes on the zombie apocalypse in videogames, and it's not like we're short on those. Then the Michonne spin-off happened, and it felt like a tiring restatement of the same formula. I still like the way Telltale structure stories—Batman was a real return to form—but Michonne reduced those Big Decision Moments to predictable cliches more thoroughly than any of their games bar maybe Minecraft: Story Mode. It put me off so much I haven't played New Frontier at all. Maybe I'll come back for the final season? 

Austin Wood: Far Cry

I burned out on Far Cry. I thought Far Cry 3 was great, partly because I'll play any game with a good bow in it, but mainly because despite having the worst name, backstory and appearance of any protagonist ever, Jason Brody was a really interesting character. This was also back when Ubisoft's now well-worn open-world formula still felt relatively fresh, so I spent a lot of time just exploring the Rook Islands. I'd have to reinstall it to be sure, but I think I finished everything apart from those stupid, tiny collectibles. Then Far Cry 4 came out, and while it felt better to play, it also felt pretty familiar and I thought the environments and characters were worse, and from there it was just downhill for me. I don't what it would take to get me back into the series, but I can tell you it's not cavemen and it's not Montana.  

Chris Livingston: Just Cause

I burned out on Just Cause. I really, really loved the chaos and destruction of Just Cause 1 and 2 but it tended to be a bit mindless—which is great! There are plenty of times I want to unplug my brain and just blow stuff up for a while, and those games are a beautiful canvas for that kind of freeform mayhem. After a while, though, I guess it's just not enough to engage me. When Just Cause 3 rolled around and looked like it would be more of the same, I just didn't bite. I know I probably would have enjoyed it for a few hours, but couldn't imagine I'd really get deep into it.

Andy Chalk: King's Quest

Since Austin beat me to the punch on Far Cry (do yourself a favor—play 1, 2, Blood Dragon, and then call it quits while you're still having fun) I'll go back a little further in time to King's Quest. I loved the first three King's Quest games but by the time I had finished with the fourth, Perils of Rosella, I'd had enough. I don't remember if I knew it at the time, or if it actually took the arrival of KQ5, Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder, to make me realize that I had no interest, but when it finally came around I did not care one whit—I don't think I even bothered trying it. The KQ games were great in their day but they never grew out of it, and between that and the way I kind of overdosed on Sierra adventures when I first started playing them (I played the holy hell out of Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and most of the rest, too), I've never felt an urge to go back. 

Tom Senior: Assassin's Creed

For some reason I have lost most of my enthusiasm for Assassin's Creed. Even with a two-year break and a mostly successful revamp in Origins, the notion of going into a new 100-hour adventure and having to rediscover wristblades and start all over again with a new assassin is wearying. It's unfair too, given how much effort goes into making the historical setting of each game so beautiful and different. What I'm really tired of is the fundamentals like running, jumping and fighting, which haven't felt fun and responsive to me in those games for years. I would rather go back to the pistol carnage of Black Flag than spend 50 hours moving up through Origin's leveling system. Hopefully the newly revealed Assassin's Creed Odyssey can make some exciting changes. 

James Davenport: Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 7 was great, the perfect soft reset for the series that relied on a small cast of interesting characters rather than zombies to scare us. I guess I should walk that back a touch. The first third of Resident Evil 7 was great, but then the zombie stand-ins showed up, the hilarious and spooky Baker family fell to the wayside, and RE7 became a generic monster shooter with light puzzle-solving. I was feeling especially defeated during the short train of cameos during the final moments. Chris Redfield shows up, a Wesker gun saves the day, and whadda you know? It's the same convoluted Resident Evil nonsense I'd been hoping the series had left behind for good. Damnit, Capcom! I've never been chased through a mansion by a middle-aged man in a swamp before! But RE7 spends its final six or so hours taking you further and further away from the dream. If early Resident Evil 8 trailers even hint at Umbrella, zombies, or ropes in an old character, I'm out until someone can convince me otherwise. 

Jarred Walton: Might and Magic

I had several "go to" series growing up, Ultima, Might and Magic, and Wizardry. Ultima and Wizardry suffered ignominious deaths at the hands of the developers, and Might and Magic was basically dead until a tenth installment arrived (twelve years after the previous title) in 2014. I loved Might and Magic III through V, but never quite felt lake the later editions kept up with the times. MM6: Mandate of Heaven was the last game in the series I played more than a few hours, and I never even tried MM8 through MM10.

Heroes of Might and Magic took a similar trajectory, in that I thought one through three were great, and four and beyond couldn't keep my interest. That's the sad reality of getting older and more responsible, perhaps. After staying up until 6am far too many times with HOMM3, I finished school, got a real job, and pulling an all-nighter on a game was no longer something I wanted to do. I have no idea if the later versions are any good.

Sorry Might and Magic. It's not you, it's me.

Whether it’s an Easter egg, a joke character, or just a little nudge at a competitor, developers love slipping the odd reference to other games into their own. Sometimes though, they go beyond just slapping a Dopefish on a wall or quipping about a ‘doomed space marine’, and we get to see our heroes stride into entirely new, often completely inappropriate new worlds.

Here are a few of our favourites, along the ones that caused the most ‘wait, what?’ blinking on discovery. 

Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Jedi

Yes, he can hold his breath underwater for ten minutes and quip his way through any sword-fight… but only The Force Unleashed II let him try his luck with a lightsaber. Turns out that you don’t need a sharp wit if you’re waving around two of the universe’s deadliest glowsticks and aren’t afraid to use them. Guybrush Threepkiller is so famous in-universe, he even has his own statues. We’re almost positive that’ll be brought up at some point in the next movie. After all, Rey does need a new teacher. Just as long as Elaine never finds out about it. 

Final Fantasy makes history in Assasin's Creed

Obviously, everything in the Assassin’s Creed series is meticulously researched and true to life, especially the alien gods and the time Ezio punched the Pope. Write it all down in your history homework! Which means that, while aliens might not have built the pyramids, they definitely got up to a bit of chocobo racing on the side. That’s according to this crossover, where Assassins ended up in Final Fantasy XV, while its villain ended up pounding sand for a bit before being dragged back to his own game by a hastily summoned Bahamut. There’s even a stuffed Moogle lying around in case you feel lonely after they’ve gone, and some fancy weapons to keep and confuse archaeologists for a few thousand years. Along with that Stargate, obviously. 

Commander Keen hangs about in Doom II

There’s a few odd appearances in Doom 2, including the severed head of John Romero as the end-boss, and a trip back to Wolfenstein 3D in the secret levels. By far the strangest thing though is what lies behind those: former id star Commander Keen… murdered and hanging from meathooks. The story goes that Adrian Carmack was the childkiller in question, having chafed at making cutesy games instead of enjoying himself with blood and guts. However, that was not enough to get rid of the boy-genius forever, for both John Romero and Tom Hall have confirmed that Commander Keen, real name Billy Blaze, is in fact Wolfenstein hero BJ Blazkowicz’s grandson… and father to the Doomguy. What a strange family tree. 

Earthworm Jim digs into Battle Arena Toshinden

He’s the world’s mightiest worm! He fights aliens! He travels galaxies! He gets flattened by a lot of cows! And he’s one of the few 90s mascots to actually be awesome, starring in two excellent platformers, one surprisingly good cartoon series, and… well, let’s not mention the sequels. Like Bubsy, 3D was not kind to Earthworm Jim, though unlike Bubsy, people actually cared. His most successful jump into the third dimension turned out to be this Easter Egg in the PC version of Toshinden, where with the help of his super-suit and a really big club, he was finally able to make the future of gaming eat dirt. Pound them into the ground. Bury himself in glory. Be cut in half and yet… no, wait. Not that one. But it was still as good as fans were going to get.

Everyone plays Poker Night at the Inventory 

Easily the most ambitious gaming crossover in recent memory… and it’s all about hanging out between games. Telltale’s Poker Night series combined, amongst a few others (deep breath) The Heavy from Team Fortress 2, Max from Sam and Max, Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade Adventures and also some webcomic whose name we forget off-hand, GLaDOS from Portal, Brock Samson from the Venture Bros (not a game, but never mind), Claptrap from Borderlands, Sam from Sam and Max replacing Max from Sam and Max, and Ash from The Evil Dead. Phew.

They weren’t great poker games, but that wasn’t really the point. It was about the banter between the different competitors as they sat back and shot the shit without the customary heavy artillery. We could also have had members of the cast from The Walking Dead and Back to the Future, but they were deemed unsuitable for the atmosphere. They didn’t want anyone crying, or any kids seeing Doc and Marty in a sweary environment. A pity. When the game revved up, they could have seen some serious shit.

Portal 2’s Space Core invades Skyrim 

When Bethesda showed off DLC for Oblivion, it was horse armour. And everybody laughed. Come Skyrim, the laugh was far more positive. One of the earliest additions saw the exiled Space Core (spoilers for a decade old game there) crash-land in Tamriel, still just as eager to explore SPAAAAAAAACE. Going bizarrely unnoticed by the locals, all probably fretting about that whole dragon invasion thing, it came crashing down in a plume of smoke. Pick it up and it still kept blinking and talking in your inventory, delivering… well, not very varied dialogue. In summary:  “Space. Space. Space!” And yet, still it was less annoying than all those guards and their epic tales of glory curtailed by the sudden impact of a ballistic stick to the lower-leg.

XCOM defends Civ V: Brave New World

What does XCOM do when there are no aliens to fight? Apparently, they learn to ****ing shoot straight. The XCOM Squad in Civ V is an elite tactical unit that gets the job done, air-dropping into friendly territory and laying down the law. Specifically, Thou Shalt Not Screw With XCOM. In the absence of aliens, they have their eyes set on "Giant Death Robots," and are happy to act as shock troopers or defensive units while they watch the skies and await their destiny. But since there are apparently no aliens interested in Earth during the Civ games, they’re probably going to be waiting a while. Should have taken the flight to Alpha Centauri.

Princess Rosella favours Leisure Suit Larry 3

Sierra On-Line loved its in-jokes. Not one but two sequels (this one and Space Quest III) ended with the characters somehow finding their way to the developers’ own offices for a chat with studio leads Ken and Roberta Williams, with Larry also taking trips to a Westworld style factory where adventure heroes are rebuilt after every stupid death, complete with King’s Quest’s King Graham being readied for duty, and finally showing up in the Old West for a cameo in Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. By far the strangest cameos came at the end of Leisure Suit Larry 3, where the trip to Sierraland involved trekking through scenes from games like Police Quest and Space Quest 2, before meeting Roberta Williams directing a particularly annoying scene from King’s Quest IV, in which Princess Rosella is trapped in the slobbery mouth of a giant whale. Strange.

Frank West covers Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

He’s covered wars, you know. But oddly, Dead Rising’s original and best hero doesn’t seem to know how to cover himself in this odd outing. Despite Lost Planet being set on a frozen world, everyone’s favourite photographer show up not only without his camera, but also without his trousers. Somehow avoiding hypothermia, he runs around in nothing but underpants, while still managing to rain destruction on the armies of insects happy to not have to peel their food for once. What a trooper. 

Scorpion goes mental in Psi-Ops

Fighting game characters are probably the most cameo-friendly of all, whether it’s a full game like Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, or bonus combatants-without-a-k-because-that’s-how-it’s-spelled in the likes of Injustice. But they show up in other games with curious regularity too. Lightning god Raiden for instance showed up in Unreal Championship, while invisible fighter Reptile could have popped into basically any game. Ever seen a flicker on your screen playing, say, Fortnite? As far as you know, it might be him.

But still, this was an odd one. Even though Midway was the publisher of both MK and Psi-Ops, it’s a bit of a leap from fighting game to third-person action game. Sadly, just wearing his palette-swapped ninja outfit didn’t actually make you the world’s clingiest fighter. He still had to swap out his “get over here!” attack for regular guns. On the plus side, having to beat every character in the game two out of three times would have gotten pretty darn tiring.

The Animus control panel for Assassin's Creed Origins arrived this month, and it lets players cheat their butts off. Turn on godmode, do more damage, enjoy unlimited adrenaline, level up to max, make yourself stealthier, bring back the days of one-hit assassinations no matter your enemy's level—all by moving a few sliders.

I have simpler dreams: I just want to create a loyal army of hippos and make them eat everybody. A console setting lets you lead up to five tamed animals at once, and I want all five of them to be hippos. A group of hippos, by the way, are called a crash (also a pod, a herd, or a bloat, but I like crash best). I want a crash of hippos and I'm gonna get one.

I have a few false starts in my quest to become king of the hippos. I feel like I'll have an easier time of things if wild animals don't attack me, so I use the console to make every animal in the game friendly, or at least neutral. The issue I run into is that if a creature is friendly, sleep darts have no effect on it, and you can only tame animals you've drugged with darts. No amount of darting these neutral hippos does anything except make them flinch and jiggle a bit. Luckily, I've got unlimited darts and I can change the control panel settings on the fly.

Once I've made it so animals hate me again, I start properly darting hippos, then taming them. It's still a little tricky, since the moment I tame one hippo it becomes fiercely loyal and attacks any angry hippo, even the ones I've darted and put to sleep. With a few loyal hippos, a few angry hippos, and a few sleeping hippos, it all gets a bit messy. This is definitely a crash.

Making things worse, at one point the three or four hippos I've tamed suddenly lose their loyalty and begin attacking me again. I have to hastily re-drug and tame them a second time, and by the time I've done it there are only three left alive. Running along the riverbank for a while, I can't find more to fill out my desired crash of five. I tame a couple of crocodiles, but somehow having three hippos and two crocs isn't quite as satisfying as an all-hippo entourage.

Still fun, though.

I head to another part of the world (fast-traveling means animal followers disappear), tame three more hippos, and while swimming around looking for more, I board a large river ship and get into a scrap with the guards on board. Two of my three hippos teleport onto the ship with me, though one is killed, set on fire, and weirdly floats away. The other gets stuck and becomes hostile to me. The third simply never arrives.

Note to self: don't bring my crash onto boats. Hippos may eat boats sometimes, but they don't ride them well.

Finally, I find five new hippos, dart them, tame them, and I've assembled my mighty crash. One of them, I notice, stands out from the rest. He walks around looking up at the sky. I don't know if it's some glitch, or if he's looking at a bird, or if maybe I've tamed a different kind of hippo, one with hopes and dreams, perhaps a natural curiosity about the universe that makes him gaze to the heavens instead of at the ground like his brethren.

I name him Astro.

I take Astro and Unnamed Hippos 1-4 and attack a nearby Roman outpost. Turns out, sadly, hippos don't really make the best army. I seem to recall them being pretty tough customers during my playthrough of AC:O, sinking my boats at inopportune times and mercilessly slaughtering villagers who strayed too close to the water.

As I lead my crash into battle against the Romans, however, they do pretty poorly. They do kill a few Romans, but it sure takes a while, and one hippo perishes before I decide to jump in and take care of business so I don't lose another. Once the Romans are dead, I find they have a captive lion, which I free and throw darts at until it loves me.

It sort of defeats the purpose of having a hippo army if they can't just eat all my enemies while I stand around watching. If I have to pitch in myself, what's the point? I want hippos fighting for me, not beside me. It's still fun, it just doesn't really make me feel like a hippo lord.

As I take my hippos and lion onto our next battle, I suddenly remember Astro. I lost one hippo against the Romans, but I'm happy to see it wasn't him. He's still with me, still gazing skyward. Even if I am a bit disappointed with my hippos, Astro still seems hopeful.

A free, PC-only Assassin's Creed: Origin update has added the Animus Control Panel, designed to let you "hack" the game by fiddling with 70 different sliders. You can now run four times the normal speed, hit twice as hard, and tame more animals at any one time, creating an army of hippos to destroy anyone in your path.

I like that you can use it both for shenanigans—reducing enemy speed to 25% while you zip around them like an annoying fly—or to tweak the game slightly so that it suits your playstyle. If you enjoy a more arcade-y feel, you could up attack speed to 150% and reduce stun time. Or if you want slow, meaningful combat, you can slow down swing speed, increase damage and limit health points. 

Ubisoft says it might be "overwhelming" for some players, so it's created a few presets to get you started. Hardcore Stealth, for example, will increase enemy senses so that they'll detect you at the slightest sound, but you'll be able to assassinate them in one hit. 

If you enjoyed the game but got all you could out of it, then it could be fun to jump back in and twiddle with the sliders for half an hour. Players are sharing their presets on the Ubisoft forums, in case you're looking for inspiration.

Ever fancied having three animal companions—at the same time? Soon you'll be able to fulfill that fantasy and many others thanks to the new Animus Control Panel, coming later this month to the PC version of Assassins Creed: Origins. 

The Animus Control Panel will give players the ability to fiddle with 75 parameters across 11 categories. Details won't be revealed until it's closer to release but the image below shows sliders and toggles for options including diving speed, NPC movement speed, melee and ranged damage scaling, assassination and adrenaline abilities, and of course the maximum number of tamed animals.   

The new menu will come with three pre-made presets (the image indicates a "God Mode" preset, although looking at the sliders I'm pretty sure you could go godlier than that) and player-created presets will be shareable through a dedicated forum. The panel will be part of the Uplay Library page, and it will only be available on PC.  

I've recently fallen in belated love with Assassin's Creed: Origins, in large part because exploring such a beautifully recreated chunk of Egyptian landscape feels like some kind of incredible time travel holiday. The mix of actual history and antiquarian mythology make Origins the richest open world since The Witcher III, but the scenery is only part of what makes it special. Convincing non-player characters and side quests which end in a surprise are also vital to making the world feel alive. It also helps that the AI was designed to prevent the kind of shambles most of us are familiar with from open world games.

At a Game Devlopers Conference session today entitled 'Refactoring the NPC mission system in Assassin's Creed: Origins', gameplay programmer Jean-Marie Santoni-Constantini said that the team at Ubisoft Montreal were inspired by the likes of Shadow of Mordor, Breath of the Wild, and (of course) The Witcher III when it came to designing the behaviour of Origins' NPCs. The solution the developer landed on was ensuring that every NPC in the game always had a goal to complete, whether that might mean a bodyguard protecting another NPC, a captain relaxing in a camp, a villager escorting a cart and so on. You can actually see these goals exposed when you send Senu, your friendly eagle-come-targeting-drone to scout an area.

Where things get interesting is when conflicting goals intersect. So the rebels goal might be to ambush a cart, while Roman troops are set on defending it. Once the cart enters the trigger zone for the rebels, they'll swoop in on horses or begin peppering Caesar's boys with arrows. Whether or not Bayek joins in is of course up to you, the player—but even if you don't the event will play out organically as the NPCs' actions will continue to be driven by their primary goals. 

Santoni-Constantini noted it was possible for an NPC to have additional sub-goals, but they can never have no goal whatsoever. Unlike me on a Sunday.

As Santoni-Constantini was explaining how the system worked, I flashed back to that time I spent perching on the top of a trireme mast and firing flaming arrows onto the poor schmuck commercial sailors below. At first they tried to put out the flaming hay piles. Then they started diving off the burning vessel in vintage action movie style. It looked and felt incredibly natural and cool, and also made me realise how little I'd seen the game mess up in the way open worlds often tend to. 

Okay, so one time I found a horse perched or a fence post by just its back legs, and on another occasion I ran into an immortal gazelle which stayed chill despite being shot through the throat, but in terms of how the actual characters act, in the 40+ hours I've played Origins it has seldom broken its uncanny illusion.

This is particularly true of missions during which you're escorting another character. So often these are the bane of open worlds, because your non-player chum will spook easily, or die accidentally, leading to irritating restarts. Santoni-Constantini explained how they'd avoided these problems by giving plenty of latitude to the goals of these characters. 

For instance, you've probably noticed that if Bayek jumps on a boat or horse, the other character will do likewise without skipping a beat in whatever expositional story they're delivering. In one instance I even recall Aya desperately swimming behind me as I began a lengthy sea journey in one of those wicker Ubers that are everywhere. And even if you do give your significant other the slip, the game will take a long time to trigger a fail state. Meanwhile, the NPC will be waiting patiently near where you left them.

Santoni-Constantini explained that it was important Origins AI was robust enough to be able to handle edge cases like a vehicle being destroyed or sudden combat. If a fight kicks off they will join in, and then resume the mission once the enemies have been defeated. The benefit to the player of having NPCs with their shit together is obvious, but he also said it made debugging the game much easier because when a problem was encountered it only had to be fixed once, and the fix would automatically apply to other similar cases. However, the trade off using such systemic AI was that it meant there was less scope for the designers to create bespoke moments. 

That clash of mindset between the programming team and mission designers was ultimately resolved by creating side quests which had satisfying narrative twists that could be delivered without having to change the AI's fundamental rules. So from humble peasants to garrison commanders, what underpins Origins' society are a set of clearly-defined, achievable goals. If only the real world was so simple. Right now mine would probably be alternating between 'eat burger' and 'protect dog'.